Crime and Punishment
Part 6, Chapter 1
Summary & Analysis

LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Crime and Punishment, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Criminality, Morality, and Guilt

Madness and Intoxication

Coincidence and Free Will

Money and Poverty

Family

Summary

Analysis

Raskolnikov passes the next several days in a “fog.” He worries about Svidrigailov and meets with him several times after Katerina’s death. Svidrigailov has set money aside to send the children to a good orphanage. Raskolnikov attends Katerina’s memorial service with Sonya and realizes that, if he could get away from everyone and be completely alone, he would attain happiness.

Raskolnikov still believes that he must achieve a state of total solitude in order to be happy. What he does not realize, as Porfiry later acknowledges, is that he needs Razumikhin, Dunya, Pulcheria, and Sonya. Raskolnikov recognizes this only once he has reached the penal colony in Siberia.

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Themes

Razumikhin visits him in his apartment to ask whether Raskolnikov is mad, and why he has abandoned his mother and sister. His mother complains that Raskolnikov is hanging about with Sonya, whom she calls “that one.” Razumikhin concludes that Raskolnikov does not seem mad, and that he has simply come to express displeasure at his friend’s behavior.

Although Razumikhin has gone back of forth, wondering whether Raskolnikov is insane or sane, he seems always to return to the idea that his friend is merely having a bad time of it. This reflects Razumikhin’s essential optimism: he always believes his friend’s condition will improve.

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Raskolnikov tells Razumikhin he has spoken highly of him to his sister, and has said Razumikhin will remain her and Pulcheria’s “Providence” in the coming days and weeks. Raskolnikov tells Razumikhin that his “secret” will be revealed very soon. Razumikhin says that Dunya has received a letter, presumably from Svidrigailov, that she finds “very disturbing.” He also reports that Nikolai the painter has confessed to the two murders.

Once again, Raskolnikov commends the care of his sister and mother to Razumikhin. The letter from Svidrigailov represents a final offer to Dunya: if she goes with him to America, he will give her an enormous amount of money, enough to secure the family’s financial situation more or less indefinitely.

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Razumikhin leaves, believing that Raskolnikov has been involved in a political intrigue and is hiding his activities to escape detection. He realizes the letter is probably from Svidrigailov and rushes to intercept Dunya. Raskolnikov worries to himself that even Razumikhin has come to suspect that he, Raskolnikov, has committed the murders. He resolves to visit Svidrigailov and “finish with him,” but as he leaves his apartment he runs into Porfiry. Horrified, Raskolnikov demands that Porfiry “speak, speak.”

Razumikhin has figured out a way to square his concerns for Raskolnikov’s mental state, the strangeness of which has become impossible to ignore, and his unrelenting optimism, his belief in Raskolnikov’s innocence. Raskolnikov’s political intrigue may very well be, to Razumikhin, a justifiable act of heroism, an expression of personal courage, rather than an act of cold-blooded murder.

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Themes

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